


the taste of your venom is all too much (i took a lethal dose of you)

by AK Lecter (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternatively: Hannibal gets his turn to be petty instead of continuously going back to Will, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Break Up, Denial of Feelings, Episode: s03e06 Dolce, F/M, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter in Denial, Hurt Hannibal Lecter, M/M, POV Hannibal Lecter, Past Alana Bloom/Hannibal Lecter, Vulnerable Hannibal Lecter, and getting dumped, despite not really being together in the first place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27246100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/AK%20Lecter
Summary: “Sit at the head of the table, Will. Uncle Jack is on the way, and this will all be over soon.”“One way or another?”He wants to cup Will’s face again, trace the hard line of his jaw, comb through those messy locks. But that’s an indulgence, and the clock has run out for that form of indulgence. For both of them. He thinks Will sees that urge, lurking just beneath his surface, and he leans closer to Hannibal expectantly.“There is only one path now. Choices breed choices, and now that all the cards have been revealed, we are nearing the end.”Will opens his mouth and snaps it shut just as quickly, perhaps thinking better of any last sentiments. He takes his spot without protest, quietly, and Hannibal doesn’t let himself wonder what the man is thinking.Will has had his reckonings, and Hannibal is owed his severance.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier & Hannibal Lecter, Jack Crawford & Hannibal Lecter, Jack Crawford & Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 21
Kudos: 44





	the taste of your venom is all too much (i took a lethal dose of you)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!!!! This is my first work for this fandom I've rapidly become obsessed with and I really wanted a fic that gave Hannibal an opportunity to reject Will in Dolce, to regain some of his pride and also not cut open Will's head. This will turn into a full out S3 AU for the second half of S3, when I find time to update this bad boy, and I am far too excited to write that. I had far too much fun in Hanni's head XD  
> Enjoy!!!!! <3

It takes him a moment, truly, to understand the depths of Will Graham’s forgiveness when the shot rings in his ear and the sharp tang of blood offends the otherwise pleasant aroma of Florence’s cobblestone streets. He sees Will fall out of the corner of his eyes, focused on the setting sun before him – the end of an era, perhaps, or the end of _him_ if his dear Will still plays puppet to Jack – and feels the cold ice of understanding cut at his throat before he knows what exactly he’s understanding. He feels the knife twist up into his heart, between cracking ribs, the knowledge like a blow reverberating through his very bones down to the marrow.

Hannibal’s been betrayed by Will twice now, and this time is just as painful as cheap perfume on curly red strands of obnoxious hair from a vivacious and _rude_ reporter among that tragic ship-on-a-bottle scent. It’s more painful, possibly, because he will remember this time _always_ , no matter how long Will’s afterimage haunts him, no matter how many dreams the twisted hateful love and beauty of Will taunts him in, as cruel in its depiction as anything he’s ever fantasized. It’s seared into his brain, every detail committed to a room built for his uncontrollable desire.

Will had laughed, briefly, smile bright and sparkling in his eyes. Real, Hannibal would think it as. Categorized among the smiles Alana had granted him before her inevitable fall, and the smiles Abigail had bestowed upon him. Once.

He wants to believe the Will smiling at him had been real, that he’d chased Hannibal for more than some long-seated revenge plan, or perhaps a righteous killing, but Hannibal has come to the uncomfortable admission that he doesn’t know Will as well as he’d once believed. He’s blinded by Will's effervescence, his addictive presence, and that leaves him open to deception. _Vulnerable_ to it. Caesar had his senators; allies he’d thought trustworthy. Eros had his love, Psyche, so susceptible to his charms and resilient still, so malleable under her own volitions and weak to others. _For_ others.

“ _…the betrayer and the betrayed. Which one are you?_ ”

Bedelia had made it seem so simple, icy, and elegant in the face of Hannibal’s reckless instability, selfish self-destruction. One betrayer, one betrayed. But it’s not that simple. He’d been _seen_ , been _recognized_ , and Will had followed the orders of those around him rather than his own desires. He’d feared their connection, perhaps. Resented it, maybe. He’d peeled back the curtains of Hannibal’s mind palace for not his own pleasure, but fear. Fear of others. Fear of himself. And perhaps the validated fear of Hannibal.

They are not some parallel of Patroclus and Achilles, shield-brethren honor-bound to each other, and a cause of satisfaction. Lovers, by some accounts. Brothers, by others. Despite his initial thinking, his initial hopes (foolish and poorly suited to his person suit as those might be) he knows the metaphor to be riddled with faults, holes. They had not conquered anything, after all, together or separate. The only wounds dealt had been to each other, and the fatal arrow (not as fatal as it could have been, not as fatal as Hannibal might have wished, however briefly the thoughts had flickered behind the cold veil Bedelia thinks she understands) had been delivered by his Patroclus, not the enemy.

An enemy of a different sort. More dangerous and intimate.

His weak spot that not even the River Styx could cover, in all its immortal essence and glory.

“ _You cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love.”_

Love has made him a fool, as bitter and human as those he hunts and elevates. Perhaps it is no longer time for forgiveness, but severance. The removal of this tumor-like affliction leeching at his insides, poisoning his common sense, is no longer a desire, but a need. A _necessity_ , as vital and problematic as the painful rhythm his heart incessantly beats to.

Hannibal can’t escape it, not in memories of a safer past, not in the heat of a willing body, and not in the flush of intoxicated indulgence. Hannibal can’t resist it, not across the world in a place rich and safe and free, and not across the pew from rumpled hair and a wild smile.

There’s no hope here. No future. No life, not the kind he’s ever desired.

There might never have been, and the illusion of companionship and understanding had blinded him to such an important revelation. The desire for intimacy, closeness, for knowing and being known in return had been too seductive to see through. A siren call, luring in the one desperate enough to hear it for the sake of its beauty. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, a wise man’s poison of choice, and the philosopher’s typical beverage.

He doesn’t need to look to see the nonfatal wound bleed through Will’s shoulder, lodgment deep and precise as any shot Chiyoh would fire (he does not need to think if it is or isn’t her, she’s been ever-present since Mischa’s death, a rare source of stability and safety despite her imprisonment). The glint of a dropped knife catches his eye, but he pockets it without a fuss. The bitter resentment, acidic in its distaste, is already brindled in his throat, caught on the tip of his tongue. Words are meaningless to employ here, while Will’s nearly unconscious for the sheer pain of his wounds. As much as Bedelia’s solution appeals, he knows what his forgiveness would do. What _any_ brand of forgiveness, his or God’s or Will’s (all of which have irrevocably begun to blur, twisting and spiraling and twining so tightly around one another that it stifles his own mind, clouds it, like an out of fashion cloak, or ill-suited suit) will do.

It will elevate Will, permeate him. Consuming is becoming, becoming is consuming, and Hannibal needs freedom. He needs the weight tight around his ankle removed, the weak point through which the arrow keeps piercing to be _fixed_. He can’t take more shattered teacups, their falls and crashes and illusionary repairs a constant loop in his normally impenetrable mind. He can’t take any more forgiveness, vengeful as it might be, entrancing as it seems to be.

Killing Will…it will accomplish nothing, a temporary balm over his wounded soul, perhaps, but also another tie. Another string, with which Hannibal will _only_ be able to hang himself on. Another piece given and changed for Will Graham. Eating him would be even more intimate, more infectious. A becoming that he’d seen in Will before the betrayals. A becoming that is rapidly fading out of sight, gone beyond his mind’s eye and the most foolish of hopes, the most futile of endeavors.

Hannibal pushes those thoughts towards the back of his mind, letting the familiar calm of his effusive recollections settle the betrayal, settle the emotions. Compartmentalization is a mental exercise he’s always excelled at, and it is good to stretch old muscles even in one’s memory.

He lifts the glass of water to Will’s lips, feeling the sweaty, trembling skin beneath his palm with an inexplicable feeling of concern. Irrational, considering Will’s decided plans – devious enough that he’s almost proud – but true. As real as everything he’s ever felt for this man.

“This is going to hurt,” he cautions, for lack of a better ice breaker. Polite courtesies and compliments do not extend rules for someone willing to forgive you with the edge of his blade, and it leaves Hannibal just the slightest bit off-balance. Not that he’ll grant Will that insight, grant more vulnerability for him to pursue tirelessly. “The bullet is still inside you.”

Will grunts, shifting painfully as Hannibal strips him off his jacket methodically, clinically almost. There’s a moment where Will’s arms are bound by the jacket, where he’s leaning forward and in pain, that Hannibal wishes to reach out, to cup his neck and pull him close, but he resists. Will, despite a lack of general lucidity while his wound burns, notices this, eyes squinting and curious as Hannibal fully removes the jacket and does not let his touch wander.

It’s intimate, perhaps, cutting into the blood-soaked ruin that is Will’s dress shirt. Feeling Will stay pliant beneath him, unconcerned by his touch or care. It stings, ever twisting the ice lodged where his heart should be. Another trap, perhaps. A betrayal of emotions. Intentions.

“Chiyoh has always been very protective of me,” he says, letting the first safe topic that comes to mind fall into Will’s lap. He has little he’s willing to say, little he’s willing to hear, but he’s curious. Insatiably, perhaps. Will laughs at the understatement, shallow and pained. “Did she kill her tenant, or did you?”

“She did,” Will rasps, grin forced and tired.

Hannibal smiles too, a thin veneer of pleasantries he’s desperately clinging to. He’s never done well with strong emotions. Especially not where this man is concerned.

“Excellent.”

It is. He cares for Chiyoh, he truly does, but his curiosity had outweighed all else. To know she’s killed, she’s tainted herself the way she’d tried to save him from, is intoxicating. Heady. He brushes it aside for future comprehension, and indeed reflection. It is a matter for later, less imposing than the blood leaking onto Sogliato’s abhorrent chair.

He hums, digging the bullet out expertly, and preparing bandages beside the chair along with gauze. The wound weeps, tiny trails of blood slow and sluggish as they exit Will. He makes eye contact with the man, for the first time since they’ve arrived, perhaps. His blue eyes are distant, hazed with pain, but still intelligent. Always intelligent.

The knife drops into Will’s palm before he realizes it. Bedelia might have been right. He is feeling rather reckless of late.

“You dropped your forgiveness, Will.”

His tone is even, pronunciation careful and free of inflection, but Will sees his feelings beyond that, sees it in the forced calm as Hannibal leans on the chair, careful not to touch him. The knowledge blinks and fades into his dull blue eyes like a lighthouse on a distant shoreline, gradually consumed by fog and an ocean of other things. Will looks down at his knife without being prompted, shoulders tense.

“You forgive how God forgives,” he continues, and Will’s eyes meet his once more, ever bright with understanding. A blessing and a curse, for both of them. “Would you have done it quickly, or would you have stopped to gloat?”

Will twitches, a half-smirk more bravado than any real emotion.

“Does God gloat?”

Hannibal lets out a breath, taking in the scent of Will, the salty sheen of sweat and the metallic tang of blood and that _atrocious_ aftershave. It’s bittersweet, to say the least.

“Often.”

He wraps the wound sufficiently, avoiding any lingering burn of skin against his, and pulls away as soon as he’s able, hands red with Will’s blood. Will’s eyes are still curious, seeking, as though Hannibal is a particularly interesting jigsaw puzzle he’s attempting to solve in the beautiful confines of his mind.

_“I don’t find you that interesting.”_

“ _You will.”_

“That’s… _it_?” Will breathes out, shifting with a pained groan as Hannibal moves towards the sink to clean his hands. “No drugs? No… _forgiveness_? No designs?”

“Are you seeking forgiveness, Will? Is that why you sought me out?”

“I wanted…” Will hesitates. “I don’t know what I wanted.”

Hannibal nods, lips thin.

“The first bit of honesty you’ve offered in a while, I’m sure. Forgiveness, it seems, is a double-edged sword. It has not helped either of us.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

Will’s tone is flat, emotionless. Hannibal doesn’t exert any effort into reading it, not when he’s made his choice. Perhaps he could divine the future in those swirling tides of confusion, read what fate Will pictures, what fate Will _desires_ , but he won’t. Not now. Not ever again if he can help it.

“Some cultures,” he starts, sighing as the hot water burns at the red flakes stuck to his skin, “believe that loved ones haunt the living after death, as vengeful spirits or as a simple memory. There is an especially strong tie between the dead and their killers, in these cultures, and the idea that taking them from this plane means becoming them.”

“You said you saw my becoming.”

“I told you already, Will. You separating yourself from me, it is the same as me separating myself from you. There are no becomings left between us. And no other ties if I have my way.”

Will looks caught off guard, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“A clean slate?”

“The slate will never be fully cleansed where we are concerned.”

“Then _what_?”

Hannibal shuts the sink off, drying his hands and glancing at Will. Their eyes connect, holding each other with a pull neither of them can explain. A pull Hannibal can’t resist.

“One last meal, with Uncle Jack in tow, and then you won’t see me ever again. You won’t hear my voice, you won’t see my face, and you won’t know where I am unless you truly look. But you won’t look, Will, because we will no longer be one. We will be nothing.”

“Can we really be nothing, Hannibal? After everything you have done? After everything _I_ have done?”

Hannibal kneels before him, taking in the blood-matted hair, the dirt and cuts littering Will’s unkempt face. He loves this man, as much as he loathes such a conclusion, such a weakness, he does. This is the only way. He cups Will’s cheek tenderly, much the same as he had on that fateful night he’d left Will with a smile and Abigail with the death she’d avoided.

There’s no knife in his hand, this time. No planned forgiveness or betrayals.

The teacup is not broken, it is shattered. Fragments crumbled into dust, spread across the world by the wind and lost to the sands of time. It is unfixable, even in the mind. It will never be the same, for all the equations and delusions and hopes he might create. Acceptance…he must accept this.

“ _I let you know me. See me. I gave you a rare gift, but you didn’t want it.”_

_“Didn’t I?”_

“Your form of cleansing is a blood bath,” Will says, voice softer than the hard glare of his eyes. He doesn’t shift away from Hannibal, and that’s more telling than anything he might say. “Will this be another one? A new teacup to shatter?”

Hannibal pulls away, hand burning.

“You were the one that required a sacrifice, Will. I have never required such a thing. You and Jack shall leave here alive, and I will leave here the same.”

“That’s where this journey leaves me, in your eyes?” disbelief colors Will’s voice, and the pain in his shoulder seems to be something he’s adapted to because he sits up without a sound. “Alive? Victorious?”

Hannibal’s smile is bitter.

“You will go back to your dogs and your comfortable home. You will consult on cases, and hate yourself for understanding, and you will teach future generations of agents without a brain cell between them. I won’t be there. I won’t haunt you. I won’t try to sway you. There will be nothing left unsaid. Nothing left to see. We share rooms, in this mind palace of mine, but memories can be modified, rooms reconstructed.”

“Separation?”

“That is all we have left for each other, Will. Your intentions are macabre and justified, but I will not play into them any longer. It is best if we… _end_ our dance, while we are both alive enough to do so.”

“Is that in my best interest or yours?”

“ _Do you believe you could change me, the way I’ve changed you?”_

_“I already did.”_

Hannibal turns away from those piercing eyes; too knowing, too seeing. Being seen…it is more human a desire than he should entertain, a sense of relieved loneliness he’d fabricated in the quiet of his mind. He’d been reckless. He’d been foolish.

“Are they no longer the same?”

Will frowns.

“Were they ever?”

“You see me,” Hannibal says, tongue leaden. “I let you. That was…”

He can’t voice the thoughts properly, can’t convey the sentiment, or allow for Will to understand it. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow, and he won’t leave room for any more of it. Hannibal shakes his head.

“Sit at the head of the table, Will. Uncle Jack is on the way, and this will all be over soon.”

“One way or another?”

He wants to cup Will’s face again, trace the hard line of his jaw, comb through those messy locks. But that’s an indulgence, and the clock has run out for that form of indulgence. For both of them. He thinks Will sees that urge, lurking just beneath his surface, and he leans closer to Hannibal expectantly.

“There is only one path now. Choices breed choices, and now that all the cards have been revealed, we are nearing the end.”

Will opens his mouth and snaps it shut just as quickly, perhaps thinking better of any last sentiments. He takes his spot without protest, quietly, and Hannibal doesn’t let himself wonder what the man is thinking.

Will has had his reckonings, and Hannibal is owed his severance.

* * *

Jack is an easy enough target to subdue. He’s caught off guard by Will’s compliance, seated at the head of the table with a glass of wine carefully clasped between two calloused fingers. Signs of strength, part of the puzzle that makes up Will Graham he’s always admired. He’s only ever been soft at first glance, beautifully dangerous at any glance thereinafter. An apex predator, a man of manipulations and masks.

Hannibal’s equal.

Not that it matters anymore, Will is playing along for the moment, dropped forgiveness safely out of reach, but Hannibal hasn’t forgotten. He hasn’t forgiven.

Jack freezes at the feast prepared, the three place settings, and it’s enough of a pause for Hannibal to slip behind him and knock him out. Simple, painless, and easy.

Will’s eyes are a luminescent azure in the glow of the candles, a condemnation perhaps, or some sort of holy call that Hannibal studiously avoids. A few knots and Uncle Jack is prepared for their feast, situated to the left of him and the right of Will (a subtle dig, a position of trust between Will and Jack when none of them have ever truly trusted one another, ever suspicious, ever spinning new betrayals).

The plates are set, and Hannibal pours the same vintage blend he’d had at their last supper (not that any but he had indulged in it). The sacrificial lamb is expertly prepared, recipe the same as the last meal of another life, with a man he’d thought he could trust. Cleansing of sins, perhaps. Absolution, severance… he doesn’t care to name this, name any of it. So he carves, serving the pieces of tender meat carefully, expertly, pleased at the aroma replacing Will’s bitter tang, so close to heart. He leaves Jack with a knife, half out of curiosity, half out of confidence that his bonds will hold, and avoids Will’s gaze as he serves him.

For once, his dish is simple, absent of elaborate presentations or intricacies he indulges in for their sheer beauty. This dish is a message, a simple, elegant, message delivered on a silver platter. It is a sacrifice, a sacrifice he is now asking for, and it is a forgiveness he allows.

_“We could disappear now. Tonight. Feed your dogs. Leave a note for Alana, never see her or Jack Crawford again. Almost polite.”_

He’d only meant to offer one more chance, after all. But it seems he’d offered more than that. He’d offered too much.

It is as he takes his place, fingers curling around the wine stem, allowing the aroma to drift to him before sipping at it delicately, that Jack stirs. Hannibal looks to Will, lips pulled in an almost mocking smirk. This is the dinner they’d never had, the dinner Hannibal’s constructed and fabricated in his mind hundreds of times seeking a better outcome. Searching for a way to preserve the teacup.

None ever arose, not when he knows Will shall always betray him, and Hannibal’s forgiveness will always come wrapped in a crimson embrace. He aches to reach out, to _feel_ the curve of his smile, his _mark_ , on his…beloved, would be the most accurate word. He aches, and he yearns, and he stings, but he traps those desires in his inhuman veil, behind his tattered person-suit that has worn with age and use and pain. No longer well-tailored, as Bedelia had originally described. Ill-suited. Cheap.

“Will?”

Will doesn’t look to Jack as the man speaks his name. The only indication he’s heard Jack is the slight inclination of his head, the careful glint of flint and steel as he commands Hannibal’s attention.

“I’m not dead, Jack. No need for the mournful tones yet.”

He doesn’t offer any sort of explanation for his lack of binds, instead taking a sip of his wine and maintaining a blank, empty expression. Even Hannibal can’t place Will’s tone.

Jack’s eyes grow cold as they shift to Hannibal, the eyes of a man who’d almost killed him, would have if he hadn’t hesitated. Further proof of Hannibal’s recklessness. He still is not entirely aware of how those circumstances came to be, if he hadn’t cared enough to fight, or if Jack had been more skilled than anticipated.

“Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal tears his eyes off Will and offers Jack a smile.

“Hello, Jack. Came here to try your luck again?”

Hannibal wonders if Will had planned it, orchestrated it, planned to avoid their inevitable collision with Hannibal’s death at Jack’s hands. The thought hurts more than it should, and he has to stop himself from caressing the scars around his wrists. Will’s marks, indirectly, but still his.

“What’s your angle here, Doctor? What’s your game?”

Hannibal smiles with his teeth, predacious mannerisms an honesty he can rarely afford. Smoke and mirrors, suits and masks…all of it blends, inevitably. Permeance is a rare thing in his world, in the world he’d tried to share. There’s a pleasure in playing, a pleasure in toying, but there’s also a simplicity in the truth.

“ _To the truth, and all its consequences.”_

 _We start where we begin,_ he thinks. Parallels in nature, beautiful and enrapturing yet so disturbing. So offensive, at times. Humans indulge in dishonesty, in lies, as a heady drug. Tempting as ever, to see what one wants to see. It seems even he has fallen prey to seduction. _Denial_.

“ _Ricorda stanotte, perché è l'inizio del tutto_ ,” Hannibal intones clearly. “In English, that roughly translates to _remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always_. Succinctly put, but it holds better meaning in Italian. Richer, more…pure. It is attributed to Dante yet cannot be found in his original texts. A mistranslation, perhaps. But an elegant one. I think it fitting for us. An end in the beginning, endless in its possibilities and misunderstandings.”

He takes a sip at his wine, allowing the fragrance to calm him, settle him.

“My _angle_ , Jack, is clearing those misunderstandings. Showing you what dear Will intended I show. The truth…” Hannibal looks Will in the eyes, mouth suddenly dry. He narrows his eyes, forcing the warm affection churning deep within to form steel, to form ice. Something far less potent than love. “…and all its consequences.”

Understanding echoes in Will’s eyes and dread settles in Jack’s.

The truth of the matter is, they seek to box him up, fit him in a neat category beyond the labels they’d tied to him. _Patron of the arts_ traded for cannibal. _Friend_ for felon. _Psychiatrist_ for psychopath. _Man_ for monster. Simplicity fails to capture the paradoxical image he creates, the one only Will has ever seen. The one Bedelia’s only glimpsed.

“You let us find you,” Jack accuses. “You’ve been reckless, leaving a trail of corpses for us to follow like a goddamn trail of crumbs…”

“Open endings,” Hannibal says, “are rather prosaic, I’ve found. Something I admire greatly about Norse mythology is the foresight in it, the prescription of their own inevitable doom. There’s a beauty in the carnage of it, the inevitability of it.”

“Is this to be Ragnarök?” Will questions dryly.

“Out with the old, in with the new. I do see the appeal in toppling the gods of old for a world anew, but that might be beyond even my capabilities.”

“You want an ending?” Jack asks. “That’s why you didn’t fight back?”

Hannibal’s lips thin.

“I was… _reckless_ , as we’ve established. I won’t be caught off guard again, I can assure you. Do tell me, did Will put you up to that? I hadn’t fathomed the thought of you using your hands to kill me, as opposed to a gun.”

Will looks to him in surprise, caught off guard enough for Hannibal to think the surprise might be genuine, not another lure for Hannibal to choke himself on. In his heart, he doesn’t believe Will sent Jack, no more than he believes Jack sent Will. But belief and reality are often two separate things.

“It felt fitting, Doctor. And I put _myself_ up to it. No one else.”

Hannibal nods.

“I thought so. No more proxies, it would seem.” A ghost of a smile graces his lips. “Even steven.”

Will’s lips twist bitterly, and he sips at the wine to hide it. Hannibal still notices of course, ever attentive to the shifts of him, the mannerisms, and deceptions. An intimate knowledge. _Folie à deux_ , a madness shared by two. Even still Will paints the hallowed halls of his memory palace a malevolent red, glowing like an unwanted night light among the wreckage of Anthony Dimmond’s remains.

“ _This is my design. A valentine written on a broken man.”_

He still thinks of it, thinks of the way the skin had curled and flaked under his shaking hands. He thinks of the way the glowing smile had dimmed, the way the warm eyes so damningly different from Will’s had darkened, hardened, as the fear set in. Hannibal let him go the first time, let him live for nothing more than being a perfectly imperfect copy, but the second time…

A broken heart. _His_ broken heart, carved on a man as broken as he, as twisted as he. Hannibal wonders if Will had known it, had sensed the valentine’s crime of charm and warmth in stark contrast to Will’s bitter betrayal, Will’s absence. Could he feel Anthony’s desire, emanating from the empty vessel Hannibal had used to try and drain himself of the pointless affections? Could he feel Hannibal’s temptation to just _let_ Anthony play, replace Will’s face with someone else’s?

“Why did you reveal yourself?” Jack questions suddenly, breaking the tense silence with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop. “You let us find you. You knew we’d find you. Why?”

Hannibal deliberates, eyes drifting to the kitchen, to the ghost of Abigail ever lingering in it. A permanent stain, one he thinks he regrets. Too trusting, too fragile. Too cynical, too jagged. Like raw diamonds worn down by time and man, carved to the center and buffed to someone else’s ideal. Abigail had been a mix of many things, a young woman of many gifts and shades and masks, but never one who had earned her death. Her life, her death…gifts for Will. A teacup for an invader in his soul.

“To be known is a powerful truth, an addictive reality. _Cogito ergo sum_ , I think therefore I exist, but it was a lonely existence, in many ways. It appears the Ripper was indeed human, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

He offers a toast to Jack, taking a careful bite of the lamb to gather his thoughts. The flavor doesn’t explode on his tongue so much as it seeps into it, like warmth borrowed from a partner at night. The aftertaste is ashen, metallic, but he knows that’s only his imagination, or Will’s. He has some measure of difficulty separating the two, now.

“ _Let them only see us, while we wear the mask_ ,” Will quotes dryly, with a pointed look at Hannibal, fork dancing around the lamb lazily. “… _our cries to thee from tortured souls arise_.”

Dunbar. Hannibal can see the lines Will wishes to draw, not that he cares for them much.

“ _In many an eye that measures me, the mortal sickness of a mind, too unhappy to be kind_.”

Will does not rise to the bait, but Hannibal catches the way his throat bobs, the way his fingers twitch. Unsettled as always by his place in Hannibal’s soul, painstakingly carved against all better sense. Like a tumor, the removal of it will allow for his freedom. For _their_ freedom. It will allow Hannibal to rebuild. Renovate his memories and recover from this… _pain_.

“We are our beginnings,” Hannibal says in the growing silence, watching Jack’s eyes flicker between them with some degree of warranted suspicion. Will’s not his man, after all. It just so happens he’s not Hannibal’s either. Pity. “To find completion is to finish a cycle, to return to one’s chrysalis and wonder at the remnants of a discarded shell. I think closure is all that binds the three of us now, a desire for it. A desire for _truth_. A confession of sins, perhaps. Airing of all our dirty laundry.”

“You want honesty?” Jack sounds bewildered. It’s a pleasing feeling, throwing off the indomitable Uncle Jack. As sweet as the agony Miriam’s arm had caused Jack so long ago, pure power.

Hannibal inclines his head, a polite nod.

“ _The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, but, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil?_ ”

“Enough damn metaphors. _You_ are the one who lied. You killed people, _ate them_ , and fed them to us!”

“I rarely lied, Jack,” Hannibal says softly. “Sins of omission were offered more frequently than outright lies, and I do believe you saw what you wanted to, just like our dear Doctor Bloom. On the topic of sins, you never did inform me if you killed Bella with your hands or her cure. Did she choke on it like ambrosia? Overindulgence as her doom? Did she go gentle into that good night?”

“ _Not with a bang but a whimper_ ,” Will mutters, and Hannibal hates himself for the warmth he feels at that. Conjoined…he resents it, now.

“She…” the fire dims in Jack’s eyes, his shoulders acquiring a slump only Bella could inspire. Softness in steel, a weak point. It’s always been too easy to take advantage of that, even now when Jack should know better. “She was suffering. I couldn’t bear to watch her die in front of me, bit by bit, decaying like a corpse. She didn’t deserve that.”

“A mercy killing. You kill to save, to lessen the ache rather than alter it. It is not so different from the Ripper, Jack, you transformed her. Even if it is only in your mind. You and Will have that in common.”

“Mercy?” Will asks, blue eyes dim.

Hannibal hides his smirk behind his glass of wine.

“Perceived mercy. Delusions of goodness, righteousness. Tell me, Will, did you and Jack ever discuss how Randall Tier’s murder felt during your clandestine meetings? Did you tell him that the tableau was of your design, rather than mine?”

“ _Will_ —”

“It was _necessary_ ,” Will snaps, “to gain your trust. I had to get it to lose it, didn’t I?”

“A noose around your neck,” Hannibal replies, “fabricated by your own lies, so convoluted that even you can no longer unweave them. Even still you are caught between the cloth folds, unwilling to give into asphyxiation and unwilling to accept the knife freely offered to save yourself. Indecision is your grandest foe, toeing the line between sinner and savior as if it’s a choice.”

“I’ve already tasted your knife, Hannibal. Can’t say I care much for its _bite_.”

“Forgiveness is often painful, Will. _To err is human; to forgive, divine_.”

“Always with the God complex,” Will replies coolly, “you give me shit for _forgiving how God forgives_ when you do the same damned thing. You killed Abigail to punish me. You _gutted me_ to punish me.”

“Reciprocity,” Hannibal replies. “A betrayal for a betrayal.”

“You see yourself as the betrayed?”

“ _With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you. I can feed the caterpillar, I can whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me.”_

“I see myself as the blind. So stifled and anxious you are, wrapped in a cloak of laws and justification. You don’t share my appetite. I believe I see _that_ now.”

Will flinches, as if struck. It’s a beautiful indication that Hannibal has some degree of influence. Satisfying, perhaps. He thinks of the glistening tears in a beautiful embrace, his and Will’s and Abigail’s, a family tied together in spilled blood and secrets. He thinks of the warm slump of Will’s body, weak in his arms and close enough that they feel like one person. One heart. One break. One betrayal.

The ghost of his forgiveness aches against his own skin, and he wonders if Will had felt the break of Hannibal’s heart in his own chest. The twist of it, beating against his fingertips, crushed bit by bit like a pomegranate fruit in a fist, dark juices painting cold hand. Seeds rejected. _Heart_ rejected.

Will’s no Persephone, after all. He can’t have it both ways.

Hannibal takes a deep breath, pushing back his chair and walking towards Will slowly, carefully. Features carefully carved into a practiced expression, a mask of blankness safe enough to hide behind, to preserve what little of his dignity is shut away from Will’s gift, Will’s empathetic apathy.

“Do you understand me now?” a whisper, too fond, like a caress on the narrowing space between them. Jack is all but forgotten, silent with the knife still tight in his grip, skin stretched around the calculated flex of muscles. “Are you clear on what you’re seeing?”

“Darkness,” Will replies flatly, “tendrils of it, stretching in every direction like weeds eager for expansion, hooked to victims like puppet strings or a noose, maybe both.”

“Are you my victim?”

“How do you see me?”

_"The mongoose I want under the stairs when the snakes slither by."_

He knows the answer Will’s expecting, the one he’s always claimed. Hannibal’s equal. A predator. A monster in a shifting person-suit, suffocating beneath it. _You see me_ , Hannibal thinks, _but I wonder if I’ve ever truly seen you._

“My past,” Hannibal says, so soft that it might not have left his mouth at all, languishing on his tongue with solemn regard. “No longer my future.”

Something flickers in Will’s eyes, something fragile and weak, horribly vulnerable and painful from the brief glimpse he gets, but it’s gone before he can analyze it further, before he can dissect it like he desperately wants to. None of them say anything, perhaps because they don’t know how to break the silence. It reminds him of a poem, one he’d used to piece himself back together after giving everything, _losing_ everything.

_The solemn Sea of Silence lies between us;_

_I know thou livest, and thou lovest me;_

_And yet I wish some white ship would come sailing_

_Across the ocean, bearing word from thee._

And the word had come, on a small ship with a smaller crew. Delivered by hand with a smile, forgiveness by knife. Love by death. Will’s unpredictable in everything but his betrayals, for those are now an old hat. He wonders if the silence is worth breaking, solemn or not. But he isn’t allowed the opportunity to break it, not when Mason’s hired _pigs_ come sniffing, eager for green and gold.

He doesn’t care, doesn’t hesitate, hands raised with a smirk. Mason’s always been a curious patient, distasteful and rude and everything he would have already killed were it not for Margot, for the poor little bird trapped in a gilded cage of repression and shallow fears. Perhaps this is best, he thinks.

One last deliverance, one more severance.

_Too deep the language which the spirit utters;_

_Too vast the knowledge which my soul hath stirred._

_Send some white ship across the Sea of Silence,_

_And interrupt its utterance with a word._

Hannibal looks Will in the eyes, watching resignation flit across the features he knows so well, and not at all. Will looks over at him, tense and guarded yet so painfully open, and Hannibal thinks he can see the ghost of the unspoken die on Will’s tongue. He thinks he can see all the things never said, lingering like electricity in the gap between them. The knowledge burdens him, silently. Everything is silent.

And when the darkness takes him, he greets it like an old friend, for once free of the taunt of clouded blue eyes just begging to be freed.

**Author's Note:**

> The stuff in the center and in italics is (sadly) not mine, but dialogue from the show! The same goes for the initial lines with Hannibal and Will, which I took from Dolce. Dialogue entirely in italics is excerpted from poems and plays, and maybe I'll add the names of them all when I have some more time on my hands. Please let me know your thoughts!


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